Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Interview: HEALTH

I first saw HEALTH roughly a year ago, playing in front of a fairly small audience. After attending a couple of better attended shows, they always seemed to dwarf their surroundings and the crowd especially, with the expansive crush of their sound-a nightmarishly pounding throb that was laced with shrieking electronics and intricate poly-rhythms. The frantic immediacy of HEALTH's live show is offset by the ghostly and eerily beautiful singing. It is these contradictory sonic factors that have contributed to how much HEALTH's music has lent itself to what is arguably some of the most intriguing remix work of a band's music in recent memory. It has gotten to the point where they have put up a separate Myspace page to showcase the reworked music. After a remix of one of their tracks by the highly influential Crystal Castles, HEALTH found itself in a much different place than the tiny space where I first saw them a year ago: in the top 10 of the UK Indie Singles Chart. It now seems possible that HEALTH's audience will perhaps seem more evenly matched with the gargantuan sound they make. Founding member and multi-instrumentalist John Famglietti was kind enough to speak with WSJR by phone yesterday:

So are you guys in Houston today?

Yeah, we're gonna be in Houston probably a little bit late actually. We're going to be there in like, three hours.

Oh, really? Is that at Super Happy Fun Land? Or some other place?

No, it's at somewhere I've never heard of called The Proletariat. We've never played there before.

Tell me a little about the catalyst for Health and how you formed. Were you all drawn to LA from other places? Or are you all natives? How much do you feel the surroundings affect your music?

Two of us are from LA, that's Jupiter (Keyes) and BJ (Miller). BJ's from Riverside, which is the IE (Inland Empire), which is pretty close to LA. And Jupiter's from El Monte, so pretty much from LA. I'm from San Diego and Jake (Duzsik) is from Seattle. Jake moved there to go to school, and I moved to LA when I was 18. So that's basically it. We just wanted to, it's mostly out of we met and wanted to form a band. The surroundings, I don't know if there's anything like landscape or anything that inspired us. Definitely not. But the scene is definitely very inspiring. And the community. I don't know how that comes out musically, but that definitely makes it a lot easier and a lot more encouraging to make music, to have that support.

Yeah, I was actually wondering about how you perceive the creative culture in LA, geographically. Is LA as defined by location or as split up as New York tends to be? Are there specific neighborhoods that have a lot going on or does the sprawl tend to cut into the clusters of activity?

I guess the only real difference I see is that pretty much everyone you're going to hang out with or is part of the scene, almost all of them live on the East Side, or east. And of course the hip neighborhoods are definitely east of Hollywood now days, or closer to downtown, and the shows are around there. Because it's LA, it's very rare that stuff is really centered around a neighborhood. You know, kids who are part of the scene or a part of the shows and all the cultural shit are living, as usual, really fucking far. Or they live in the IE and they're fucking driving an hour to go to a show and they're always there. So people are driving really far and that's just LA. So nothing to really slow it down at all, but there's definitely a vibe and cool things going down on the East Side and around downtown, in Echo Park and areas around there, where it's cheaper. And then that's where we live. But it's not really localized into a little borough or whatever the hell. And the IE is the Inland Empire, the very edge of LA County, in the fucking desert. It takes an hour to get to the city. It's just over the mountain, where Riverside is. That's where's BJ's from. And a band like Abe Vigoda, are from the IE. They're an LA band and they're driving an hour to come in every time they go to a show, which is really awesome.

Since you mentioned Abe Vigoda, the first half of the decade seemed to have been dominated by East Coast acts, specifically out of New York, and now the West Coast seems to be producing a lot of quality music. Especially in the past few years and definitely more than the overhyped East Coast in the first part of the decade. What are some of your favorite bands from LA? Maybe you can name some that people might not be aware of.

Captain Ahab is probably one of our favorites. I think the LA bands that are getting the most attention are the ones that are more rock-oriented. Captain Ahab is really awesome, doesn't get very much mention, and is probably the best. Also there's a really awesome, really active noise scene in LA. But it's kind of hard to name their people because they just change their name and you can't well...fucking whatever. (Laughter) Also, Anavan is really awesome. Nosaj Thing, he's electronic, really awesome. I know it's getting to be a lot. There are a lot of good bands! The good thing is that bands from LA are getting a lot of attention so I don't even need to mention them, but they're getting a lot of attention. That's really cool. Really exciting. I still think that the East Coast is still on top, not New York anymore, but Baltimore is a really good scene with the highest quantity of really good bands.

I guess Baltimore, Providence, and Williamsburg have been the main places, East Coast-wise.

Yeah, but I think the impressive thing about the LA scene though, really, is no one is fucking moving there to make a band. So all the bands we have are people who are pretty much from the area for the most part, or around the area. Very few people are moving to LA now days to be part of something hip or cool like all these people moving to different cities, who have been the whole decade. It's pretty cool that we have this many good bands of people who are just already here.

Hopefully, it stays that way. That's usually what ruins it.

(Laughter)

I believe there's some age diversity in the group. Do you feel that affects how your tastes differ from each other or the different influences you each might bring to the band?

Yeah, yeah. But I think we're close enough in age that we still have formative...I don't know. Well, Jake and I had formative experiences with punk rock like most do, and BJ and Jupiter didn't. I don't think that has anything to do with their age, just how they grew up and stuff like that. Definitely some differences in music, but we all really come together on what we like. I think we're all pretty much close enough in age that we still have the same touchstones of what was popular in the 90's growing up. We all relate just fine. I think Jake and I having a formative experience in punk rock is probably the biggest difference in terms of our diversity in musical taste. But we're all bound to the same stuff.

So did you have mixed feelings about SXSW? Were there any highlights of CMJ for you? Do you see these conferences as a necessary evil or are they enjoyable on some level?

We don't have any mixed feelings about SXSW. We love SXSW. Really love SXSW. I think these are really cool things to do. CMJ,I think we prefer SXSW a lot more. It makes a lot more sense in terms of how much easier it is and how everything is connected and right there. CMJ was a fucking...was a lot of work. Parking and driving in Manhattan, and getting from place to place, and shit like that. But we really enjoyed it. It's really fun stuff. We enjoyed it overall.

I heard you chose to record at The Smell for sound purposes, since that's where you've played a lot. Homecoming shows after tour etc. Is that the whole story, or were there other advantages aside from the field recording methodology of recording at the club where you usually perform?

It was mostly about the sound. We were we were really really scared about our album just not having... Most bands you hear today, you'll buy the cd and they'll always be recorded under the same circumstances and everything is strangely super fucking dry and sounds really really digital and not very good. So we were just trying to find a way, though we were self-recording it for a budget, to still make sure the recording would have character and would sound really good at The Smell. Ultimately we were allowed to record it for free. We had gone to studios that were within our price range and they had asbestos ceilings or something that just we were not going to accept to record our drums in. We had to have concrete or brick or whatever it took, the open walls. And The Smell's got that-it's all concrete and brick and it sounds really good.

Yeah, you can definitely hear the whole room and the drums. So that's part of what you were looking for, that ambient room sound?

Yeah definitely. The Smell was so cavernous that it was really hard to record in, and it definitely changes the tone quite a bit. So it's not the ideal situation, but it sounds really good. We were willing to have that and have way less control, than record in a studio and just be spending all this time just trying to make it sound better and be really unhappy with the results. But we're happy with the results.

I've heard at least one of you, maybe in a press kit, compare yourselves to Animal Collective, and I feel that almost might be selling yourselves short in a way. I was surprised by how much your full length sounded maybe like some of This Heat's first two records at times, along with other electronics-infused kinda scratchy-noisy-punk stuff from the late 70's/early 80's. Is there an interest in electronics from that era, or did you use more sophisticated modern equipment to accomplish those sounds? For instance, when you're beating on drum pads, some people are purists to the point where they want to have the exact drum pads that some early electronic pioneer band used. Do you have that kind of vintage equipment fetish?

We don't have any equipment fetish. We're going to use whatever sounds good to us. But the funny thing is my drum pads are actually from the 80's. They're analog and they do have that sound! (Laughter)

Awesome.

So it just kind of happened that way. We do really like bands from that era, but I mean that's the thing- you know, having more modern equipment, unless you're having something really modern or done with computers. Pretty much anything. We use all type of old pads and shit like that and all our gear is right there, it's all outboard shit. All that stuff was available in fucking Eighty-Whatever. So it's not really that new. I guess the approach is new, so that's the way people want to think about it and it's based on how you go about it. I guess that answers your question. For the This Heat thing, people say that a lot. When we listened to This Heat in The UK, we were like "Oh shit. A lot of similarities." (Laughter) It was really funny because we were reading their liner notes and their was a slang term we use for our microphones that we thought was just our own joke. We had heard This Heat, but it wasn't a driving force. But we've gone back and actually listened to their records, and there are sounds that overlap. Sounds that they have, that we have now, and I'm sure they probably got them in a similar fashion. Which freaked us out. It was definitely after we'd written those songs.

Yeah, i didn't notice that until i heard the full-length all the way through. When i had seen you live before or listened to the first tour EP, I didn't really pick up on that.

With the album, there's a lot more to getting those sounds, a prolonged period. I'd put the track on and I would kind of jam with it on our setup that we typically go through. I'd use parts of that for little areas and overdubs, stuff like that. That's something we didn't get into with our EP, so...

You have a much harsher approach than a lot of bands of late, who are known for incorporating electronics, or maybe what you'd expect from a group that gained notoriety from a remix. Do you feel you aspire to something different aesthetically than a lot of bands that create more dance-oriented material from the beginning? For instance, a group that just throws in disco beats over standard indie rock fare? Your full-length tends to have more interesting structures than bands like that.

Yeah, I guess I don't know how planned it is, but there's definitely...shit, it's really hard to say. We're trying to do our own thing and we're just trying our best to be what a modern, intense rock band could be now, for kids. Because you know all the old intense music, it's awesome, it's the best, but it's so old at this point that it doesn't have that reaction from you anymore. And now, as a teenager getting into that stuff, you don't own that experience. It's all older records, and there aren't that many new bands that are doing something for you here and now to have that experience that your parents don't understand. I feel that there are bands that are on our wavelength. We're trying to do that, and part of being harsher, that appeals to our own tastes. We're trying to make music that, if we imagine ourselves as teenagers now or in high school, to be in a band that would be relevant to our lives now and this year at that age. That sounds a little retarded. (Laughter)

No, that makes sense. It's gotten to the point where you've been remixed so often that you have a separate Health Disco Page for the tracks. Do you ever wonder if it'll get to the point where you might consider the remix before you're even finished writing? Would you consider that a logical progression, or would that be an unnecessary concern?

I don't think there's anything really to be concerned about. We like thinking about the remixes, but we wouldn't change the way we're writing the songs. Especially listening to the remixes now, it's definitely inspired us to look at our music differently. We definitely get a lot of really great ideas from the way that someone's approaching that material, to make a dance song, or how they're playing with a sound or snippets from the original recording and repeating it to make this really cool thing. So it's definitely really become a part of the creative process for us really thinking about it. We're really into the whole remix thing, especially because everyone we're working with is hand-selected by us and we're fans of their work. I would like the Health Disco to just be these sister artists, with recorded performances for DJ's, separate from our original work. Which would be really cool.

Tell us a little about playing a show and releasing a 7" with Crystal Castles. How did your first trip to Britain go? How was the audience reaction? Were some of them maybe a little thrown even, if they were expecting you to sound more like the remix than your live show?

Yeah, that happens a lot, even in America. That happens every once in a while, people hear the show and they'll be really confused. Because you know we're not just playing synth pop or something. It doesn't happen that often, but it definitely happens. In the UK there were some pretty big surprises. The UK reaction was very different depending on where we played. In London it was really amazing. One of the shows, we got to do with Crystal Castles, and I think everyone was on board and they knew that we didn't sound like the remix at all. That was totally fine. In Manchester we played to a mostly experimental, noise crowd and they were expecting that aspect.

Did you become aware of Crystal Castles because they remixed you, or did you already kind of know them before that?

We found out about them a long, long time ago. I forgot which blog, but it was from a blog. We found them and got really excited about them and started talking to them over the internet. They only had one or two remixes out at the time and they were both really impressive. We asked them if they would be interested in doing a remix and they agreed. We also talked about doing a split and they said they would do both. The remix happened pretty early, and they did it in time for our tour CD that we took on the road. The split didn't happen until two months ago.

Lovepump started talking to us because they said they had heard things about us. They ordered our live cassette from DNT, and they really liked it. The thing that kind of put it over is that AIDS Wolf were on tour in Europe and the guy they were staying with was really talking about us a lot. We got in contact with each other and they said that they wanted to wait until SXSW and see us live, but then they just decided to enter into an agreement before they even saw us in Austin.

Anything else you want to add? What has your impression of Texas been?

Texas is really, really, really awesome. We have never had a bad show in Texas. Ever. Every time we've played Austin, it's awesome. We played Fort Worth once, it was awesome. We even played Midland AND Odessa, Texas and they weren't fucking unbelievable shows but they were still pretty good shows. We've never had a bad show in Texas. Attendance is always really good and the crowds are really awesome. I think the vibe of Texas crowds is just really awesome.

I'll be honest that I am disappointed in the record, but that was after seeing video clips of the energy of their live show. The album seems a bit flat, pulled back, and boring. I did not get that vibe from their live show. I'd still see them live though, which makes me sad that I wont be able to make it out there. Someone please shoot some video of this show.

After making my previous statement, I took the cd out, and after listening to the album though headphones, I feel like I need to take back my previous statement of the album seeming boring. Maybe I had some sand in my vagina when I listened to it the first couple of times. Maybe it's because I put it on in the background, and the album deserves full attention.

Smile Smile as The White Stripes:Pop duo Ryan Hamilton and Jencey Hirunrusme were perfect candidates to dress up as Jack and Meg White. Here’s their take on the experience.

As Jack White, how much more sullen and distant did you have to look? Ryan: "Well, I did try to be a bit more sullen and distant. To be honest though, it didn't feel like much of a stretch."

Would you ever consider wearing pants that tight in real life?Ryan: "Ha Ha! The pants I wear in real life are pretty darn tight, but those pants were in a totally different league of tightness. So … no, I would not wear pants that tight in real life. Not if I planned on being able to walk, or having children someday."

As Meg White, what were you thinking when you did the "blank" stare? Jencey:"I was thinking about cotton candy."If you could only wear two colors, what would they be?Jencey: "Turquoise and white."

Would you ever consider a Stripes-like "mystery," as in are Smile Smile brother/sister or boyfriend/girlfriend? Jencey: "No I would never do that. Ryan’s a great uncle."